


and he won't say a word

by courante



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), Buzzfeed: Worth It (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Little Mermaid Fusion, Arranged Marriage, Drowning imagery, Fairy Tale Retellings, M/M, Mild Gore, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Ryan Bergara/Steven Lim - Freeform, Story within a Story, Unreliable Narrator, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-01 03:59:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18328187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/courante/pseuds/courante
Summary: “If he finds you out before he loves you, you will turn to seafoam. If he loves you but chooses another, you will vanish in turn, before the night is done.“But above all else, you can never return the way you came.“Do you still want it?”Andrew looks steadily into her knowing eyes. “I’ll take my chances.”





	1. Memory

**Author's Note:**

> ・the chapters are posted 2-1-3 in terms of timeline, so the events in chapter 1 happen chronologically after chapter 2. i love starting fics in media res don't @ me  
> ・"love triangle" aside, this is a standrew-centric + very background shyan story  
> ・please mind the tags!! if anything triggering only happens in a specific chapter it will also be noted accordingly  
> ・halfway through writing this i found out one of steven's favorite cpop songs apparently is [you exist in my song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhXZrEHLypU&feature=youtu.be) (trn. incl.), which would be uhh a great companion to the story.  
> ・this was inspired by a Certain buzzfeed video (feel free to guess which one) and contains references to another(!) folktale because apparently i can't stop at one.   
> ・this is also set in a fictional universe!!! there are references to real practices but. just to get that out of the way.
> 
> **・again, disclaimer that the characters within are written as fictonal personas as portrayed on-screen and in no way reflect or intend to reflect real world relationships. if your name appears here, please don't read further.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _grey rocks, and greyer sea,_  
>  _and surf along the shore—_  
>  _and in my heart a name,_  
>  _my lips shall speak no more._  
>  -  
> charles g. d. roberts  
> 

I.

 

Today the sea is the color of his savior’s eyes.

Steven doesn’t remember the man’s name; if it had ever been uttered, it’s now long lost to the waves. He stands at the edge of the grey-green expanse, bare feet sinking into the warm, wet sand. Seafoam rolls smooth over his toes, lapping at the shoreline lazily. Nothing at all like that night of howling winds.

If he closes his eyes he could still recall the lightning above his head, the deep water ensnaring his limbs. So he doesn’t. Instead, he turns to Andrew, who’s sat down on a smooth boulder, staring into the sea. Steven wonders what he thinks about, wonders where he might have been on that moonless, cloudy night when his ship dashed itself against the waves. But it has nothing to do with him; an unfair question. He doesn’t ask.

Andrew doesn’t speak. The sunlight casts shadows on his angular features, his windswept hair, his dark eyes. Bottomless as the ocean, but they are warm when they fall upon Steven as he trudges through the sand towards the boulder. The beach, dotted with their footprints, is quiet.  He finds himself smiling at the way Andrew had dragged a stick through the sand in front of him: surprisingly detailed figures of them gazing at the clouds, to be folded back into the ever-shifting dunes again on the morrow.

 _I will come back_ , he remembers the voice, deep and lovely and so desperately clear, despite the roaring waves battering them both. The caress over his salt-stained cheek as he lay there breathing shallow, the pain out of focus as he thought: this must be heaven. _Wait for me._

Today, as always, the sea is empty.

“Do you want to go back inside?”

His hand finds Andrew’s, callused and worn. They are attached to each other like barnacles to a ship, a fair improvement from the first day Steven had found him, when Andrew after waking had shied away from his every movement. Whatever had happened to him before Steven found him on the lonely shore must have been nothing less than Steven’s own predicament.

Seagulls shriek above their heads, the noise an imitation of disjointed bells. Andrew’s grip is firm and unyielding as Steven leads him away, towards home.

 

II.

 

_If I hear that you pine for me, I will return to you._

Andrew could hear music drifting up from the courtyard below, the sharp turn of a flute, the drawn-out note lingering in the air before him. He takes a step forward, and it dissipates into the wind.

It had been a bedtime story for Steven, growing up, and he’d told it to Andrew thus: _long ago, a maiden from Heaven had grown tired of the angels, and so came down to earth to live a human life._

Guards in their dark uniforms and red tassels stand near every door, staring straight ahead as he passes through. They know well by now there is no stopping him from where he goes. The prince would kick up a fuss, even now, even as the day of the wedding draws near. Andrew keeps walking past the guards.

Past the maze of ivy-laden hedges older than even the Queen Mother, past the array of statues in the grand hall where one day Steven too would be cast in bronze into immortality. Past the silent doors that never open and the sunlight spilling through carved windows onto marble hallways without end. He follows the remnants of the melody beneath the balconies jutting out towards the east, in the direction of the bay.

Though the voice had been taken from his lungs, it is easy to follow the notes reverberating through the air, without being filtered through churning saltwater. Andrew takes in each jolt of pain in his soles that follows every step, the pleading cries of his friends in the back of his head, the memory of Rie and her parting words laced with pity: _—then, you can never return._

Andrew thinks about foam breaking over jagged rock, hair plastered over pale, cold skin. The needles do not seem to prick so sharp at his feet then, but at his heart.

He finds them on the reclining seats under a gazebo half-hidden among the gardenia bushes, laughing at something in a book. Ryan’s sleeves are rolled back, his dark hair wild as he reaches out to push Steven away over some perceived slight; Steven retaliates, slapping the book over his head as a petulant child would.  He murmurs something unintelligible, dodges another volley of pillows, then looks up to see Andrew on the garden path.

“Andrew!” He calls out merrily, shaking silver hair out of his face. Even now Andrew could barely look at his smile, a thing brighter than the sun; his gaze falls instead to Ryan, who looks at him with guarded eyes. Steven waves a piece of parchment between them, oblivious. “Come show this idiot how the story actually ends.”

Were this several fortnights ago, even in kinder circumstances, he might have turned and walked away. But today Steven holds the brush out to him in a way that is almost daring. As if he needs to prove something, anything.

Andrew knows. How dutiful Steven is even in the face of a marriage neither he nor Ryan wants, knowing full well he longs for elsewhere. How Steven knows what everyone knows and more, them having grown up together, that Ryan will never look at him the same way he looks at the stablemaster’s tall, gangly son. How Steven too will never think of Ryan as any more than a brother, having given his heart to the sea and the voice he continuously searches for, in vain.

And so, Andrew finds himself obliging. In a flourish of ink, everything unfolds in images beneath his hand:

_The maiden grows up happy, surrounded by good people in the countryside where she spends her youth. But as she grows older and sees more of the world, she tires of human greed, tires of those who seek her out only to never love her for her person. In the end, she calls to Heaven to take her back._

“It’s a pretty picture,” Ryan acquiesces, after Andrew is done putting the last touches, before the ink is fully dry. Steven holds the painting up to the golden light, careful to not get ink on his fingers. “But I like my version better.”

“But she gets to live forever in heaven!” Steven interjects, wide-eyed. Something burns hot inside Andrew’s chest as he looks towards his prince, who leans forward as if ready to argue again. “Wouldn’t _you_ like to?”

“Nobody lives forever,” Ryan says, in a tone that suggests this is a conversation that has been had a thousand times over. Andrew stares into the sea in the distance, faintly aware of the weight of Steven’s hand over his. “She should’ve stayed. She would’ve found someone to love her eventually. I know I would’ve. What’s there to do up _there_ , anyway, for eternity?”

Far away, the waves crash soundlessly ashore. There are no angels, Andrew knows, no heaven above the clouds. Nothing left of the wonder in finally knowing love among humankind. But he hopes, and he hopes, and he hopes.

 

III.

 

Steven wakes to the sound of a flute, as he has done every day for the past week. Andrew seems a natural musician, though the melody is sometimes so mournful Steven goes right back to wondering about the calluses on his hands, his slow and deliberate gait, his intense gaze that softens into something strangely fond every now and then, when they go down to the beach.

That was how Steven had found him: injured by the shore, unconscious in the sand but with a grip so strong Steven had almost fallen over when he’d tried to haul Andrew away from the water swirling at his feet. Holding on for dear life, as if nothing else in the world mattered.

A shipwreck, Steven thought, like what had happened to himself. Or something worse. Something Andrew could never put into words even if he would speak, or perhaps the very reason why Andrew cannot speak at all. Each question Steven’s ever put forward leads into a silence that could not be filled by pen and paper, nor flute or piano keys; nor fingers entwined, welded into his own.

He follows the music through winding halls, still shuttered and dark, to Andrew standing on the balcony where the sun is rising. Easing higher and higher, over the palace rooftops, over rolling hills and lethargic rivers, over the eastern bay.

Every day, Steven asks for permission to go out to sea again; every day, he is denied. Only until the day of the wedding, his grandmother chides gently each time. _You aren’t ready to go back yet._

The unspoken words eat at him: _we can’t lose you now._

As it should be. He has his duty to his kingdom, to his parents. To Ryan, and to those working tirelessly for their grand day at the very end of summer. Never mind how obedient he has been his entire life, how accomplished, how much the people love him. Never mind his fear, or how beneath that fear he longs again for looming waves—

“Andrew,” he blurts out, and Andrew turns. The music stops, but the hand that quickly finds his bare skin, chastising yet gentle, sends goosebumps up the length of his arm. _What’s wrong?_ Andrew’s eyes seem to ask. _Are you hurt?_

Something else, too, that is too early for Steven to want to read into just yet. “You, um. You play really well.”

Andrew inclines his head, eyebrow raised, as if he doesn’t believe what Steven is saying. He reaches for Steven’s hand, then hesitates.

“No?” Steven says, realizing. He offers it up then, fingers tentatively brushing against Andrew’s slightly-parted lips before Andrew takes his hand, holding tight. “Go ahead.”

_Thank you._

He laughs then, delighted as he leans into Andrew, and they fall together into the cushions waiting for them. Andrew does not let him do this often, as much as Steven touches him elsewhere, with or without permission. The only way he could part hard-earned words, tell Steven his name. Talk to him in the dark, where nobody can listen or whisper their disapproval.

_Who is this stranger that the prince took in, who came into his life without a word? Who was spit out from the sea like flotsam washing ashore, in the very same way Steven was?_

Steven’s heart aches; something is wrong in all of this, but he cannot call forth its name. He touches Andrew’s cheek, and Andrew freezes, allowing Steven to trace the contours of his nose, his chin. It hovers on the tip of his tongue, waiting.

Then, the bells.

“Gotta go,” Steven murmurs, hopefully apologetic enough as he feels, and lets his hand fall. Impulsively he grabs a fallen hibiscus from the bush growing into the balcony, planting it squarely into Andrew’s hair. “There, take care of that while I’m gone. Don’t kill it!”

 _You’re so childish_ , Andrew seems resigned to say, and Steven laughs as he jumps out of the seat before he could be swiped by the flute. _Come back soon._

~

“Tell me about that night again,” Ryan says, perhaps twenty minutes into their planning session. They are alone under the gazebo; the planning committee had decided to be discreet, for once, and leave them to their devices. Steven looks up from his papers, perplexed. “Your heart’s not here right now and you know it.”

“I—”

“Don’t apologize.” _Neither is mine_ hangs in the air between them, lost in the mid-morning heat. “But, honestly, we can’t keep it up like this. Tell me what’s up.”

Guilt swirls like a whirlpool at the bottom of his stomach. It’s unfair, Steven knows, and not just towards Ryan. He looks out at the sky, the seagulls circling above. “I’ve told you before. I keep dreaming—”

“About the shipwreck?”

“About the sea.” He looks down, at the faint scars across the back of his hands. “Like there’s something down there calling to me. Ever since that day he pulled me ashore—”

A pensive look crosses Ryan’s face, and Steven stops, waiting. “Calling to you, like with words, or something else?”

“I don’t know.” He buries his face in his hands, frustrated. “I don’t— I don’t—”

Steven feels the cushions shift next to him. A strong hand on his back, heftier than Andrew’s, familiar and reassuring. It sends him careening into memory: of them as children crouching under taro leaves in pouring summer rainstorms, Steven shivering as Ryan drew him close to stop the heat escaping. Even back then comfort came in the form of touch: a hand offered when he’s fallen down, or shielding him from jeers and pushing of the other children. They had both been awkward, scrawny things in those days; Steven too sensitive to the teasing, Ryan trying to argue every chance he got. The years had changed much, yet not much at all.

“Don’t get mad at me when I say this,” Ryan murmurs into his shoulder. “But I was thinking… it sounds like… I read this book a few weeks ago, and—”

“Oh, Ryan. No.”

“Don’t give me that, Steven.” He continues, somewhat carefully, like he knows what’s coming won’t be pretty, or even wanted. It’s more tact than Ryan’s ever shown for anyone, Shane aside. “You know… it was a big storm. I’m not sure if a person could—”

“But someone did!” Steven says, maybe a little sharper than needed. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“I’m not saying you’re lying, just… maybe it wasn’t a person. Not human, I mean.”

“I wasn’t saved by a wandering spirit.”

Ryan pulls his hands away. “Not a spirit. A merman.”

~

Steven believes in heaven, and angels, and perhaps other things some would say are better left in the recesses of childhood memory. He’s not so sure he believes in creatures of the sea, who speak and look like men, if only in passing and in dreams.

It is not the first time he’s heard these tales. For all the nonsense that might come out of his mouth from time to time, Ryan would not say these things to him lightly if he does not believe in earnest. And Steven knows too the kind of time he spends in the palace library when he is not out bothering the villagers for their tales, poring over old papers and tomes already falling apart at the seams. Perhaps—and perhaps it is the wanting in him, the curious and the needing—there is some truth to those stories cycled down through the ages, if colored by time and anonymity.

He walks past the stables, where the horses whinny quietly and stomp their hooves. Past the courtyard now adorned with colorful flags, as the big day draws near. Steven smiles wistfully at the workers going about their day polishing statues and floors, splashing water on sparkling marble. _Please, stop_ , he wants to call out. _Get some rest, leave it all alone._

_I don’t want this._

Where Andrew is, he doesn’t know. Steven can no longer hear his flute and its plaintive melody; Andrew must be resting, or perhaps he has already gone down to the beach. He wonders if Andrew would know anything about those who live in the sea, or if he would in his peculiar dry way shake his head: _Steven, do you really still believe in fairytales?_

No matter. His guards would despair of him leaving the palace so often at such a time, but Steven slips past their watchful eyes easily through the hidden side-door by the cellars, leading down to the steep, rocky path down the hill upon which the palace sits. The path is summer-green in the sun, lined with low shrubbery and wildflower, a straight cut down to the sandy shoreline, then out to the sharp precipitous rocks.

Something flashes in the distance near the rocks, silver-blue. Steven squints as he steps off the path into the bushes, moving cautiously behind the dunes as he ventures closer. It is still some ways off, but he could see footprints faintly in the dry sand, beyond the strandline, leading towards that direction.

Another flash. Something darker, something brown. Suddenly getting an idea, Steven veers away from the path entirely halfway, choosing instead to go through the sparse, rocky outcrop sloping gently and curving outward, above the beach. If he gets to the edge of the outcrop, he knows, he will be able to see the goings-down in the quiet little cove below; once, as a child, Steven had caught two groomsmen in a rendezvous below.

His heart beats to the birdsong above as he hurries through the bramble, never mind the branches tugging here and fro. Steven’s steps slow as he reaches the edge, and he lowers his body, crawling up the windswept peak that now seems so much smaller now that he’s grown.

Steven looks over at the steep drop below, keeping his head close to the bare stone. There, he sees two bobbing heads in the water, behind the rock-pool.

The sight does not surprise him, at first. It’s not inconceivable that someone from the palace or the village would come here for a swim. They seem to be conversing, the man and woman; then Steven sees the flash again as the mid-afternoon sun peeks out from beneath the clouds again. The man yawns, stretching his limbs, and what is unmistakably a coppery fishtail lifts above the water momentarily before sinking into the deep blue again.

It is enough for Steven to gasp aloud; he clasps his hand to his mouth, but the distance and crashing waves seems enough to mask whatever sounds may come from him. The two do not look up even once, but they do swim closer to shore, tentatively. _Merpeople_.

His head spins: _Why are they here? Should I go back, call for Ryan? Should I run down, ask them if they know the one with the peridot eyes and lovely voice? What if I scare them away?_

Before Steven could make up his mind, someone else stirs, emerging out of the low bushes and walking towards the sea. And at once, everything spinning in his mind screeches to a halt.

“Andrew?”

Steven, dazed, watches him walk into the water, drawing closer and closer to the waiting two until he is but an arm’s length away, his body submerged up to the waist. They stare at each other then, unspeaking for a long while as if turned to stone, and Steven feels frozen along with them.

The copper-haired man moves first, reaching forward to embrace Andrew; then, the woman, her dark blue tail emerging briefly above the surface. Andrew remains motionless, his mouth pressed close as they talk then, though the conversation is snatched away by wind and wave before it could reach Steven’s ears. Whatever it is, even from so far away he could see the pleading plainly on their faces, the clasped hands, the hesitation in their movements.

Andrew shakes his head stiffly. _What do they want?_ Steven wants to shout, fling his words to the wind. _What do_ you _want?_

_Who are you, Andrew? Are you—_

Instead, he lays there soundlessly as the woman reaches into a pouch slung around her shoulders, digging for something. She looks up, her expression hopeful, and presents the object to Andrew. The sunlight striking it flares a brilliant silver, different from the kind upon scales or glass.

A dagger.

Steven’s heart, something he thinks could never have beaten faster, stops.

 

IV.

 

“You’re in love with him,” Shane says, matter-of-fact, his words unintentionally sharper than the knives prickling at Andrew’s feet. “I think that makes both of us the world’s greatest fools, don’t you think?”

Andrew stares straight ahead. When Steven is attending to princely business he comes to the stables sometimes, to look for the barn-cat and her kittens. This time, Shane is also here.

It makes sense. Ryan is busy today, too.

 _I wish you could take him away_ , Andrew wants to tell him. _Back to his kingdom, or wherever you want to go. Away on your horses, across the desert, into the fields afar. You can’t have him, but you love him all the same._

 _You love him. You love him._ It echoes in the chambers of his mind until none of the words seem human anymore but sounds from whispering, bubbling vents lodged in crumbling earth beneath the waves.

“Hey,” Shane replies softly. The wistful, distant look in his face is all too recognizable. “I know. I wish I could, too.”

He gives Andrew’s arm a firm, sympathetic pat, and then he is out and away through the open door. The black-and-white kitten in Andrew’s arms mewls loudly, and he returns it gently back into the pile of hay where its mother is nursing the others.

 _Do not mope_ , Andrew tells himself, but he knows Shane is lucky, whatever similarities their circumstances hold. For all that Ryan cares for Steven, it is Shane who he loves fiercely, and will continue to love, as scandalous, as perilous, as painful as it may be. There is no quelling that particular fire once lit, and even Andrew knows those embers have never before gone cold.

Contracts can be broken, marriages annulled. But Steven will not love Andrew, even after the day is done. He will only love Andrew’s shadow, and continue chasing that past self for as long as he lives, as long as Andrew is cursed to his silence. It means, Andrew realizes dispassionately, something he’s known all this time—he is not long for this world.

~

The sea knows death. His people too, but only after three hundred years of wandering the seas. And then—

Andrew listens to the trilling of an albatross and imagines throwing himself into the deep again. Would the sea take him back? Would someone come across his bones one day, sun-bleached and picked apart by sea fleas and crabs? Would they still be human, then?

In the palace library where he had, haltingly slow, taught himself to read before Steven could catch on, Andrew’s eyes have pored over a thousand lives, a thousand endings. A thousand human stories that praise and hate and sing and weep. How easy it would be to lose oneself in that world, and how easy it would be to sit by the shore all night as the bells toll, with the moon in its heavens above; and then, in morning, give himself to the wind...

A flash of blue, darker than the sea, jolts Andrew out of his head. He furrows his brows as he stands, wobbling through the sand towards where the color had come out of the water. It had been by the rocks at the far end of the beach, a place where he does not often go, and never alone.

Slowly, painfully, he makes his way there, carrying the sandals in his hands. He’s seen that color before. Misses it even, if it is indeed what he thinks it is. Andrew’s heart beats faster and faster as he nears, throwing his sandals over into the soft, wet sand as he struggles to climb up the rocks.

It takes a considerably longer time than he’d anticipated, but in the end he makes it over to the other side. There, he hears a gasp.

“Andrew!”

Adam’s voice cuts through the gurgling waters, clear as day. His friends are waiting there in the water, faces he’s at once relieved and frightened to see. He chances a look backward, and upon finding nobody else along the lonely stretch of shoreline quickly ducks behind the rocks, hurries to meet them.

How long has it been since he had washed ashore— Andrew has lost count of the days, and yet, he stills in front of them as he wades into the cold water battering his body. Gone are Adam’s beard and Annie’s long, dark hair; they bobble in the water, strange but familiar. Like himself, Andrew supposes.

_What happened?_

“Please,” Adam whispers, his voice breaking as he reaches to embrace him. “Please come home, Andrew. It’s been so long.”

In all his time spent undersea Andrew had never heard Adam beg for anything, and certainly not like this. He reaches around Adam’s shoulders, then feels Annie’s hand on his, gripping so tightly as if Andrew is apt to disappear on the spot at any moment. His shoulder sags, softening as they hold each other in position for a moment longer. Andrew has never been fond of touch, back then, and now—

 _I can’t go_ , he mouths, pointing to his knees, once they’ve parted. His feet are at relative ease in the water, although they cannot stay for long. _You know I can’t, even if I wanted to._

“You can,” Annie says, softly. She reaches into her bag, and Andrew’s vision swims in recognition at the image of her hair, chopped short at the base of her neck. _Something gained for something lost._ What else did they exchange for an antidote, if not their voices? His knees buckle.

But Annie does not take out a vial, or a seashell, or anything he might understand otherwise as a solution. In the palm of her hand is a small dagger, razor-sharp, its handle dark driftwood inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Her hand trembles; Andrew’s heart sinks even as he takes in the beauty of the blade.

_What is this?_

Adam opens his mouth, closes it, looks away. “If—”

“You take his blood,” Annie replies for him, looking straight and defiant and sad into Andrew’s eyes, “With this. Kill him before the spell runs out and come back here, smear it on your legs. It will burn, Rie said, but less so than what it took to give you those. And then you, and then we—”

 _Take his blood. Kill him._ Andrew’s own blood feels like ice, more so than the water swirling around them, than the scales shimmering in the mid-afternoon sunlight. In that split second of finding the blade there is a moment of cold clarity: the rough wood beneath his fingers, the warm splash of blood down the length of his arm. One life for another.

It would be simple. It would be quick. Steven, who would fling himself upon Andrew with arms open at any given moment, who has never distrusted Andrew from the first day onwards, who had and has always been the reason—

“Andrew—”

He backs away, almost tripping as he stares hard at the dagger as if it were a snake ready to strike. Nothing would have prepared him for this; he shakes his head, lips pressed firmly together. _No. I can’t do that._

“Andrew, please, it’s the only way—”

_No. I’m sorry, I can’t, I can’t…_

_“Andrew!”_

This time, they all freeze. The voice is faint, carried over by the wind, but too close for comfort. _Steven_. He must’ve found the trail in the sand and, finding nobody, come around to look. Andrew waves at his friends urgently, trying hard to not focus on the despair in their eyes.

_Go! Before he sees—_

They sink into the water like apparitions, disappearing completely before Andrew turns around and takes a sharp breath as he stumbles over the rocks, pulling himself up again. The pain has turned into a dull throbbing, perhaps stayed momentarily by water, or by shock. He wouldn’t know, even when the beat of his heart hammers loudly in his ears.

_Take his blood. Kill him. And then, return to the sea._

“Andrew, hey— are you there?”

Andrew finds Steven standing on a dune as he emerges from behind the rocks, wincing as saltwater licks at his scrapes. Steven’s eyes scan Andrew briefly, at his clothes thin and soaked through; there’s something odd about the way he moves, hesitant when he has never been, but he quickly descends the shifting sands, jumping across the rivulets cascading from the hills into saltwater.

Steven’s hands finds Andrew’s like a moth to flame; he looks down and purses his lips, inspecting the shallow cuts. “Are you hurt? What were you doing back there, it’s dangerous—”

There are a dozen excuses Andrew could give: he wanted to go swimming, he was looking for crabs, he wanted to explore and get away from the beach, where someone might bother him. Instead he leans into Steven’s arms, shaking and breathless, and murmurs to his chest in hopes it will register:

_I was looking for you._

Steven stills, and there, above the restless waters, Andrew could hear the rhythm of their heartbeats in unison, thrumming like arrows leaving string. Then Steven pulls him into an embrace, voice trembling ever so slightly as arms fold warm and tight around Andrew’s back. “Don’t you ever leave my sight again.”


	2. Loss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _sea, i am like you,_  
>  _filled with broken voices._  
>  -  
> guillaume apollinaire

I.

 

When Andrew surfaces that night, all he sees at first is the dark: the vast sky of deepest blue above his head stretching forevermore on all sides like the very depths of the sea. Almost inky black, with nothing to see even when he puts up his hands.

Then everything comes into focus: the glittering stars, just as beautiful as the glowing fish and tiny creatures that blanket the shores every so often. His mother had told him stories about this once; that long ago, the stars were people, too.

But the stars are not what Andrew is here to see. The looming shadow that had passed by their heads below is now obvious to him: a large ship, sitting on the calm glassy surface. They come and go often in these waters, swiftly passing shadows to the people below. But Andrew has never seen a one so big, or so close, soft yellow light shining through the open spaces. _Fire_ , he knows, though he has never seen or touched it.

Andrew swims closer to the ship, careful to keep himself in the shadows. He runs a hand in wonder over the coarse, barnacled wood in wonder. Oh, he’s seen ships before, from a distance, their forms filtered through kelp forests and sea-worn boulders. Never this close. Never making contact.

(He could hear Adam shaking his head: _don’t_.)

Andrew heads towards the light streaming from the deck, pulls himself up to the hollows between each beam just enough that he could see the commotion. The seabed leagues below is littered with all sorts of objects—things he cannot give names to, rusted over and broken or encrusted with sand many times over. Here, he sees them all: fires burning inside clear spheres, chairs with intricate carvings lining the walkway between railing and cabin. Smells and sights he’s never laid his gaze upon before, and might never again. Music from some unknown instrument flows gaily in and out of focus, as if the musician is moving around the upper deck, or somewhere Andrew cannot catch sight of.

He sees the humans too, laughing and sipping from curved glass containers, walking along the deck. Those are legs, he thinks as he shrinks back into the waves as some pass too close, too merry to notice him. He looks at the passing feet in fascination: some are covered, some are not, but made for walking on smooth surfaces all the same. Andrew wonders how it feels to drag skin across wood, whether or not it will be the same as the feeling of his tail against the ship.

And he remembers the warnings the elders used to give: _do not wonder, do not long for shedding your tail_. It would only cause anguish, though Andrew knows not what kind they mean.

This is a clearly a party; Andrew watches in wonder as couples stagger by hand-in-hand, or clutching the furniture for support. Talking and laughing and doing strange motions with their limbs, swaying along to the music. He supposes people are the same everywhere.

There’s a laugh almost directly above him, loud but pleasant. Andrew looks up, and sees moonlight.

“Fancy taking a swim at this time of the night,” the moon says, strands of light that seem so close Andrew could almost reach out and touch them, were he not completely frozen in place by the sight. “Hey, you’ve got pretty eyes.”

It’s not the moon. Andrew refocuses his gaze and see human features, the light surrounding the man simply firelight dancing off the water. His hair is silver and long; his eyes are unfocused but dark and warm and not looking the least bit terrified that he’s talking to a stranger in the sea. A hand is held out towards Andrew, inviting, and in the air between them lingers something sweet and intoxicating that he’s never before known.

“Hey—don’t you want to come back up? It’s cold down there, isn't it?”

Andrew doesn’t know what to say except to turn tail and flee.

~

Everything changes swiftly, as the sea is wont to do. So does the way the wind blows, and quickly Andrew realizes there is a storm brewing. The currents shift, scattering the drowsy yellow tang beneath his tail and sending clownfish scuttling back into the safety of their gently waving anemones. His friends are long gone, perhaps back inside their seashell huts in the caverns to wait out the growing waves.

He should head back in with them, back to the safe confines of a kelp bed and quieter waters.

Instead, Andrew wonders what has become of the ship, and the man with the silver hair. He could no longer see its shadow clearly from here, so murky are the waters churning closer to the surface. The waves batter at his face hard as he resurfaces, and rain; he looks up at the storm-clouds that hadn’t been there previously, amazed at how fast they’d arrived. But he should go; strong swimmer though he is, there’s no reckoning with the sea or the skies at this moment.

Andrew turns, just in time to see a monstrous wave loom over, hold, and crash down over the beleaguered ship. The resulting imbalance sweeps him out further, even at this distance—his body small and insignificant against the tremendous force of nature. Darkness swirls; for a moment, everything is quiet.

With a gasp he breaks the surface, the wind whipping his hair wildly. Andrew could not see the ship any longer amidst the wild grey expanse.

“Hello?” He yells, but the thunder drowns out his voice. Faintly, he hears screaming; and then, floating before him, sharp, broken planks. Andrew avoids them narrowly, diving below again and heading in the direction where the ship had gone down.

There is nothing but debris: canvas that tries to wrap around him as he pushes it aside, remnants of wooden crates and sparkling fragments of glass. Down here, he realizes, he cannot hear their crying out.

Down here, Andrew can taste blood.

This is the way things go; it has been told in countless stories of human arrogance, of how conquering the sea is but a dream that will never come to fruition. One learns to live with death out in the open, beneath the waters. The reason why his people stay away from the ships, from the bustling cities by the coast, away from even the lonely shorelines between villages of dusty white and red.

But in the eerie calm, Andrew catches a scent: sweet but faint, carried to him by some errant current. And then, behind the falling mast, he sees a glint of silver.

~

He is heavier than Andrew had expected from the slim frame, taller, limbs pale against dark seawater. Still, Andrew could sense a heartbeat, sluggish and haggard though it is, and he knows he cannot let go just yet.

“Hey,” Andrew tells the limp form in his arms, holding the man’s head above the water, “Hey, you, stay with me, don’t—”

Another wave hits them, though much smaller than the one from before. Andrew could see the shoreline clearly now, and the large structure looming on the hill above it. That must be where humans live; it is as close as he could get, hopeful that despite the weather someone would be out looking for survivors.

The sand is fine beneath his skin as he pulls the man ashore as far as he could go, laying him out with the water lapping at his feet. Andrew, exhausted, looks up at the rain, which does not look to be subsiding soon. He looks down; the man’s eyes are still closed, his breathing as shallow as the rise and fall of his chest. Andrew puts a hand over his forehead, brushing wet hair aside, then draws back sharply.

His skin is smoother than Andrew’s, though pallid and cold. Tentatively Andrew draws close again, noticing the dribble of clear seawater trickling out from between his lips. Humans are not meant for the deep, but if Andrew simply leaves him here, what would happen?

_What do I do now?_

_How can I wake him?_

The rain drums a steady rhythm around him, _patapatapat_. Andrew knows how to pull anglerfish from the trenches, squeezing one until its lure glows brightly and shoving it against Annie’s face, waking her even as she slaps his hand away. He knows how to coax dolphins to blow their bubbles against Adam’s sleeping form, or to tickle his sides with many-colored anemones. He has none of those things now. Nothing but his voice.

So Andrew sings.

Hesitantly at first, and then louder as the wind picks up again, battering against skin and hair and scales. He sings of the swiftness of the marlin and serenity of the sunlit underwater grottoes in a language long forgotten, mimicks the woeful song of belugas and trilling of arctic tern. Over the howling gale, above the rumbling thunder, no matter who else might hear—

He sings, and for a moment, behind the dark clouds, there is a sliver of light.

Fingers curl over his forearm in a tight, stubborn grip; Andrew stops, startled, as the man starts to groan beneath him, spitting out more water. He coughs and tries to sit up as Andrew wrenches his arm away, unwilling but knowing well what would happen if he stays in this state.

_The seas are cruel, but man is crueler._

“Who—”

“Someone will come soon,” Andrew whispers, a hand on his chest and wet sand caking his arms. And then, impulsively, “Wait for me.”

The man’s eyelashes, long and dark, flutter slightly. But by the time he comes to fully Andrew has already long vanished into the waves.

 

II.

 

“Steven?”

Morning sunlight filters in through thin curtains, rippling gently as someone eases into the seat by his bedside. Steven doesn’t have to open his eyes to know who it is; his parents have already gone after checking in on him for the day, as had his grandmother. He smells spiced ginger tea on the wicker table, feels the weight of an awkward hand upon his bandages.

“I think I’d like to take a walk today,” he says, looking up with a smile.

“You sure about that?” Ryan asks dubiously, though he reaches out to steady Steven as he slips out of the sheets. Experimentally he twists his right foot this way and that; then, his left. It does not hurt as much as it had yesterday, which is enough for now. “Don’t overexert yourself.”

“Ryan, I’m fine.” A grimace, then Steven stands up, a hand clutching Ryan’s shoulder. He grins ruefully. “It’ll take more than a swim to kill me.”

The sea is calm today against a clear blue sky. A week had passed since he had been found halfway up the rocky hillside path, unconscious and barely alive. It had taken three days for Steven to wake from his feverish dreams, but even now in the warm sunlight he could hear the rattle and creak of rain-soaked wood, the roaring crash of the dark swirling waters…

The voice of an angel telling him _stay with me, stay with me._

It hadn’t been just a dream, he knows this much. Steven had once he’d regained consciousness lain awake listening to the doctors discuss the wild storm, the great loss of the ship and lives, how fortunate it had been that his family happened to be away. About how Steven’s washing ashore intact and alive through the cold autumn waters had been nothing short of a miracle.

He would not have the sea trouble him with painful thoughts while awake, but there is something else he needs to make sure of.

“Where do you want to go?”

“The beach.” Then, seeing the creases on Ryan’s forehead deepen, Steven keeps talking as he turns his feet towards the door, keeping his voice light. “Come along if you’re so worried. It’s been a while since we’ve been down there together, anyhow.”

If Ryan were about to argue earlier, now he, for once, saves it for later. “If you say so. We better not let anyone else see, though. Your grandma would have an aneurysm.”

~

The lone stretch of beach could only be seen fully from the tallest of the palace turrets; even then, one could not see beyond the other slope that rounds off the cove, nor the jagged rocks at the far end of the shore. Going down the hill is not difficult, though Steven takes his steps much more carefully now to prevent any injuries from opening once more.

Ryan walks in front of him looking here and there, humming some unfamiliar tune. Steven knows well from the palace gossip from where he’s probably picked it up; he smiles to himself as they step into the lightly warm, sun-soaked sand. Every visit, state or otherwise, has only served to fuel that particular flame.

Every visit, Steven has learned not to ask, as much as he wants to; both of them know there would be no approval from Ryan’s parents, even as his previous engagement had recently fallen through. For now, he will take what he can get, in the lull between more talk and before grand decisions are made. For now, everything is in the air. Things that he had thought he might be ready for but hoped would never come to pass. And so Steven looks back instead at his tracks winding through the dunes.

 _I will come back,_ the waves sing, weaving salt into silver hair, transforming music into piercing shrieks of seabirds above. The air is cooler than usual despite the warmth underfoot, and though they are wrapped in wool blankets the wind whips up sand around them, throws hair into his eyes. Ryan regards him carefully, keeping an eye on each step sinking into the sand, as if some hole would open up and swallow them both.

“Are you scared?”

 _Am I?_ Steven wants to ask. He thinks about his dreams: of unattainable depths, of grey-green eyes, of the voices of angels under moonlight. Of everything else he remembers little; perhaps it is better that way. For a little longer, he wants to know the sea only in the manner he sees it now. “I guess I should be.”

“Well, I would be.”

“That’s because you’re a baby.”

“Says the person who threw a tantrum at my sandcastle being so obviously better than yours.”

“God— you're insufferable. That was ten years ago!”

The wind carries their laughter high above the murmuring blue expanse, beyond the rocky outcrops. Steven bends down to touch the sand where he had lain all those nights ago; the impression has long been reclaimed by nature, but he has yet to forget. And though he may close his eyes and call back, the wind makes a poor substitute for the callused but gentle hands on his cheek that he had not the strength to see.

Quietly, the feeling settles into his heart as if it’s always meant to be there.

And then Ryan asks, his curiosity mingled with hesitation, “Do you remember anything? I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it...”

“No,” Steven says, looking at him levelly. He sighs. “I guess I should, if that makes things better. Although I don’t— I don’t remember anything, not from the party, not after. It’s all a mess in my head. But someone pulled me ashore from the sea, I know that much.

“I haven't told the doctors about him.”

They’ve known each other enough for Ryan to know immediately this will stay between them. “Why?”

“I want to look for him myself.” _But how?_ Those eyes, and that voice— it’s all Steven remembers, fragmented and jumbled though his memories are. He looks down at his feet in the sand, pursing his lips. “He told me to wait for him.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love just like this,” Ryan says, a familiar teasing seeping back into his voice. Steven makes to push him, though there’s little heat or strength to it.

“That’s not— ugh. Like _you’re_ any better, Ryan.”

They walk along the shore for a little while longer, stopping here and there to inspect tiny holes where fiddler crabs burrow themselves into the sand, turn over rocks for trails of mudskippers, chase the seagulls from their roosts. Today he is a child, reborn anew into the world, his feet though sore exuberant in feeling the world against his skin again.

And yet—

He turns towards Ryan. “You know how some stories say the first people were shaped from sand and clay?”

Ryan grins, spreading his arms towards the sky. “Sounds more likely than people growing out of bamboo, I guess. What was that one again? _She came down from heaven—_ ”

“Don’t be silly,” Steven says, turning towards the horizon. “That’s….”

_—and, in shedding her heavenly robes, she became a human child, and grew, and laughed and cried and hurt and lived. Flowers bloomed under her step, and her voice brought joy to the hearts of people. But she always wondered, a wonder that intensified every day, on the purpose of her being. If she longed for the company of humans—_

And he wonders, even on the lonely, windy beach with nobody else in sight, if he might perchance spot piercing green eyes once more.

 

III.

 

“There’s two of them,” Annie says, peeking out from behind the rocks. She reaches out to shake her companion from his slumber. “Andrew, look. Your humans.”

Most of their pod had moved on south by now, though not far enough away to cause alarm. Andrew is instantly alert as he moves over to her position. Behind them, Adam keeps a watchful eye towards the sea.

None of them should be here, and Andrew would’ve come back alone if he’d gotten his way. There are rules unspoken under running currents, rumors of those who’d come and gone, of his people who surface and are never seen again. But his friends are as stubborn as he, perhaps more.

Andrew’s heart skips a beat as he recognizes one of them almost immediately. His silver hair is tied up messily, shimmering under the sun; Andrew does not recognize the other man from the brief time he’d been able to scan the ship’s deck. He points. “It’s him.”

“ _That one?_ ” Annie’s laugh is incredulous almost, a little reprimanding, a little sad if Andrew’s ever heard it. She turns towards him. “You can’t be serious.”

“I know who—”

“No, you don’t. See that?”

On the woolen blanket wrapped around him is a likeness of the moon, curving around his shoulder. It looks vaguely familiar, a shape he’s seen before carved in wood and stone. Then he realizes; above the humans walking the beach, above the grassy hill, atop the big white house with innumerable turrets— a flag fluttering in the wind. On the flag, the very same symbol.

The man is laughing, a hand on the other’s shoulder, and when Andrew sees it in the sunlight he feels a burning in his chest that he’s never felt before.

“That’s the prince,” Annie whispers.

At this moment the man turns towards them; Andrew ducks, but perhaps not fast enough. He hears a yell: “Over there!”

They vacate the spot in a moment’s notice, shimmying behind the rocks in deeper waters. Adam’s grip on Andrew’s arm is as much his worry as a warning: _don’t._ He hears the men draw near:

“I swear I saw something moving over there—”

“You sure, Steven? I don’t see anything…”

“You weren’t even paying attention!”

The men do not wade far, though they stand at the beach’s edge for moments longer, scanning the horizon and trying to peek over the closer rocks. Behind him, the others are fully underwater, but Andrew lifts his head, stilling his movements as they come closer, hesitantly, their feet suited not for this world but their own.

And then there it is in the wind, for a split second: the sweetness in the air he has since committed to memory, a little sharper this time. He feels his pulse quickening.

Someone tugs at his tail, but he ignores it. The sloshing of water around their half-submerged heads prevents Andrew listening in on the humans’ now-hushed conversation; whatever it is, they’re already quickly trudging back to the spot from where they came, away from any incoming waves. For a moment the man half-turns, looking towards the empty horizon wistfully before continuing on towards the hillside.

 _Steven_. _The prince._ Andrew feels another tug at his tail, more insistent now, and then finally, grudgingly, he turns away from the moon.

~

Growing up, Andrew has heard all the stories: the stars who were people, the things humans do for love and hate, how he should never, never, go near any of them. How he would in time settle down with someone like himself, who lives in the sea and would never think of leaving.

How, were he to leave, he could never look back.

It is so very quiet when everyone else has left, Andrew thinks. Deep down in the warm kelp beds where his friends sleep deeply, he feels restless in a way he has never felt before. He’d seen the looks on their faces when they’d fled together, before the humans could turn back and see their tails in the water. Something clenches inside; he doesn’t need reassurance, doesn’t need pity. In the morning, when they wake, it will all be over. It is the safe way, how everyone around him eventually does. The way he has always taken.

But if there had been stories passed down, it must mean someone must’ve survived; someone must’ve come back to tell their tale, fling their words to the currents. Someone, even eons ago, who’d gone to seen the world above, and chanced to live. Even if they hadn’t, even if it had been a mistake, what of it?

The little sliver of moonlight that had found its way to his heart seems to shine even brighter down here, in the gloom of the cavern where the things familiar to him have gone away.

And so, quietly, quietly, he rises from his bed.

~

Andrew had come to these waters once, when he was younger and perhaps less foolish than he is now. Far to the north, yet not so far that the waters freeze into ice at this time of the year. Away from the fertile feeding grounds where sharks lurk, away from the sunlit shallows and reefs where his people gather clams from sandy beds and pull eels from their holes. Down in some hidden cavern guarded by things with sharp teeth.

It is there, the elders said, where the witch-woman lives. From who he could get anything his heart desires, at a price.

He shivers as he reaches out and brushes aside more of the deep green strands that obscure his vision. The kelp forests grow thick here, as much a shelter as a trap. It disquiets him; Andrew has fought before, but he knows little about what he might have to face here.

But he also knows this will be the least of his worries. Though the forest is dense, the currents surrounding the cavern entrance are quick, and were he not careful he could be swept out into the open unknown the moment he finds an opening out of the maze. He looks back at his tail, at the scrapes and scars healed over, scales shimmering faintly in the dim lighting.

_(“Forget about him,” Adam had said, when they’d fled. “It’s not— you did what you could. He’s back where he belongs now, and so are you.”_

_“It’s not what?” Andrew had asked, stubborn and furious, knowing all the while he could never show himself with others present. His friends had only looked at him with questioning eyes. But oh, how could they know?_

_As foolish, as unbelievable, as impossible as it is— how could they know one fleeting moment had changed him entirely?)_

Presently he finds himself in front of a narrow opening, tunnelling so far into the rock he could not see much more aside from the faint glow of something coming towards him. The iridescent veins in the rock glimmer as Andrew brushes his hand over the walls, and he could feel something stir deep inside.

“Well?” A soothing voice asks from the gloom, as if in response to his heart. “Are you here for help, or not?”

~

“Do you know— what it will taste like?”

“Whatever you think he tastes like,” Rie answers. “That will be it.”

“And what is the price?”

She looks at him sadly, in the kind of way Andrew thinks is worse than glee or anger or any of the feelings his friends would have towards him were he to ever see them again. The veins in the rock seem to pulsate with the beat of his heart as Rie indicates towards the currents around them. All around him float translucent pink tendrils that seem to glow from within as she speaks, her voice gentle but firm.

“That you already know.”

He understands, suddenly. Rie has seen him many times before, in myriad others that have come before him: those desperate enough to throw away everything in return for a sliver of a chance for something. Something they cannot comprehend fully, and yet, and yet—

Andrew thinks about the castle by the shore, the whispers of harpoons and nets and sharp cruel laughter of men. He thinks about the sunlit underwater glades and his people. He thinks about the moon, the storm, the rain against his skin and Steven’s. And then, he thinks about the promise he made.

Rie holds out a hand; in her palm is a plain oyster shell, its insides glowing faintly the color of fresh sea-grapes.

“It will hurt. It will be more painful than anything you have ever known, or anything you will ever know again. It will take the thing you treasure most, when the hurt passes. It will make you unrecognizable. And as long as you live as a human, you will walk on knives.

“If he finds you out before he loves you, you will turn to seafoam. If he loves you but chooses another, you will vanish in turn, before the night is done.

“But above all else, you can never return the way you came.

“Do you still want it?”

Andrew looks steadily into her knowing eyes. “I’ll take my chances.”

 

IV.

 

All good things must come to an end; Steven knows this is so, has perhaps always known it to be so from the bottom of his heart. Those things that sink muted into a boundless sea, slipping through his fingertips like smoke and tears. The sting in those words that he knows is borne not out of anger but desperation. Something he knows all too well.

He sits alone in the grand ballroom, illuminated only by moonlight coming in through the tall windows above. The courtiers have all gone away, and the servants to their quarters. His parents are already on their way to take care of other affairs, and his grandmother has retired to her rooms.

Steven doesn’t know where Ryan is; he’s not sure he wants to, right now.

Impulsively he stands and, for a moment debating if he might be seen, decides to head down the left hallway, where he knows the cellars to be. Steven has done this many a time before, going out past the guards unnoticed, but never at night. Tonight, with the moon high and the wind furious and the guards surely having retreated to the more comfortable confines of their watchhouses, it will be just as he desires.

Everyone is where they should be, and every duty is done. He sees the lantern-light from within the stables as he passes, hears the whinny and snort of a horse before his footsteps quicken and take him away before he could hear any more.

Steven wonders if it is worse to know he will marry someone who will not love him the way he hopes for, or to yearn for someone whose name he doesn’t even know.

Of course, everything considered, he is lucky. Lucky to have been born a prince, lucky to still have his family, lucky to have been betrothed to someone he’s known and cared for his entire life instead of a stranger from some faraway land. Lucky to be even afforded the chance to selfishly lament a fate that would be for most a glorious dream.

 _Lucky to be alive at all,_ he thinks, remembering the dreams of a gentle caress of a hand on his cheek, wiping away rainwater and salt. _Oh, would he have an angel wipe these tears away now._

“Is this what you want of me?” Steven yells into the night sky, voice hitching as he spreads his arms in supplication to the heavens. “Is it?”

The wind draws his hair out of the neat, careful bun he’d had done up for the royal engagement, fanning it flowing and wild over the red-and-gold ceremonial cloak. It carries his laughter far up into the turrets and higher, higher above the fast-moving clouds and firmament and stars, perhaps heaven. Will angels listen to a madman? He must look like one running down the hill, even with nobody there to look at him, nobody else but the moon and the waves hurling towards shore.

At the foot of the hill Steven stops, breathless, feet beginning to sore from being pricked by rock and bramble. In the distance he sees something shimmer and dip; a pod of dolphins breaking surface, jostling with each other as they dance across the horizon in ripples of silver and grey. If he were to close his eyes now, would he hear the sea sing to him again?

_The sea, the sea, the sea. Would it take him again, that which had given him back the first time—_

Steven watches the dolphins turn tail and streak away, vanishing almost as soon as he spots something else on the beach. A still form with water lapping at his legs, which then move, as if in pain.

His mind goes blank, and in the lightheadedness of the moment Steven almost stumbles backward. But it is not himself lying there on the wet crumbling sand, or a spirit of the past; the hair is short, the proportions unfamiliar. There is no terrible storm or pouring rain, nor sweet melody bringing him back from the dead.

But it is a person, alive, and that alone lends wings to his feet.

~

The man has no manner of clothing to speak of, Steven realizes as he approaches. Carefully he takes off his cloak, as if walking towards an injured animal. It is not a guard, or anyone he recognizes from the palace grounds. Or someone from the village who’d decided to take a swim, or even...

“Hey,” Steven whispers, crouching down next to the man and placing a tentative hand on his shoulder. He does not respond; perhaps he is nearer to death than Steven had thought. A shipwreck seems almost an impossible, cruel coincidence, but stranger things have happened. “Hey, can you hear me?”

The man’s head lifts up slightly as if in recognition of another human voice, and Steven stares into his dark, unfocused eyes and damp, dark blond hair sticking to his sharp, pale features. For a moment, he forgets how to speak.

Something clicks deep inside, a pebble dropping in still water, but everything he draws is a blank.

“Stay with me,” he whispers, words from some fragmented memory. The man’s eyes widens as he leans forward, coughing and spluttering, and it’s all Steven could do to keep a delicate balance while pulling him away from the water. The grip on his forearm is so strong that it would likely leave a bruise come morning. But that doesn’t matter now.

The man mouths something, but no sound comes out. Steven grabs the cloak and puts it around his bare shivering shoulders, too entranced and too worried to care for decorum. “What’s your name? Where did you come from? Are you— are you—”

He dares not guess. But it is all wrong, perhaps simply his delirious dreaming— this is not who he remembers, and yet.

Then, gentle and hesitant and all too fearful, as if afraid Steven would disappear into the wind before his eyes, he brings Steven’s hand up to his lips.

_Andrew._


	3. Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: cannibalism mention  
>   
> 
> 
> _i am longing to be with you,_  
>  _and by the sea,_  
>  _where we can talk together freely_  
>  _and build our castles in the air._  
>  -  
> bram stoker

 

I.

 

When Andrew returns to his chambers he finds someone has already laid out the outfit he is to wear to the wedding.

It is so strange that humans would cover up so much only to peel off these layers of themselves one by one when the day is done. Never before has he felt the way cold air would burrow into his bones, nor the summer heat warming his skin until it pains him, not until he had taken his first step ashore. How terrifying is it to know but not know what is underneath smooth fabric, to momentarily forget he has scales no longer, to drown when he has never before been afraid of water.

And now Andrew touches the silken material of the shirt, the elegant beadwork around the stiff collar, the fitted trousers, in shades of soft green and white.

The wedding is in a fortnight.

(Were he a better man, were he a self-preserving man, he would have fled long ago. But the bitter words lodged in his throat tell him even now he does not know how to be human at all, much less one who has ever known how to share.)

He looks out the window, at the dying sunset, then at the hibiscus blossom curled up and floating in a ceramic bowl atop his bedside table. Its petals are starting to brown now, though the water has momentarily stayed the rot. But no matter how long he soaks it, it will never be as boldly red as it once was.

 _You and me alike_ , he tells the flower and the sweet-scented air. Andrew folds the clothes and puts them away into the sandalwood chests underneath his bed. He takes out the blossom, dries it on the bed-sheets, and slips it in-between the layers of fabric.

And finally, under the silk, beneath the flower, he slides in the blade.

~

“Andrew,” Ryan stops him, halfway through the morning rush. “We— I— need to talk.”

There is no way out of it. Steven is busy the whole day, rushing through last-minute fittings and ceremonies and things Andrew does not quite understand but is glad to be away from. So he follows Ryan down a side hallway towards an unfamiliar room, footsteps light and heart heavy.

 _This is a mistake._ He should register fear, apprehension, suspicion, but Andrew quickly finds there is nothing but dull resignation. Someone must’ve looked through his belongings, as sparse and few as they are, and found what they’d suspected all along; this would be the final price for his foolishness. For a moment he thinks maybe it is better to go this way, without Steven knowing.

But when the door closes behind him there is no flash of a blade, no call for the guards to tie him down, cut him to pieces. There is only the high shelves full of silent books and scrolls, only Andrew and Ryan and the dust motes floating about in the mid-morning sun.

“I gotta get back there, so I’ll make this quick.

“Steven… he cares about you very much. You know that.”

Andrew had spent three days in the infirmary, mostly unconscious, after he’d been pulled ashore. In his feverish state he might have dreamed of angels descending upon him as the sun rose and fell, about silver wings and many other things. But it had been Ryan who had told him much later about Steven’s vigil, never leaving his position by Andrew’s bed no matter how hard the physicians had tried to remove him. _It is so odd that he would attach himself so firmly to a complete stranger,_ was what Andrew heard between the lines.

_Have you met somewhere before?_

The look in Ryan’s eyes had been as unreadable as it is now, a rarity for someone Andrew has observed to wear his heart exclusively on his sleeve. Andrew waits for the other shoe to drop.

“And… you about him.”

His words come forth with difficulty, but they are genuine; Andrew knows no worse liar. He inclines his head in the briefest acknowledgement of the fact. Even then, it gives him little comfort.

_—you wish it were Shane giving you this talk, don’t you? He would’ve lied. He would’ve told you to forget Steven, that he hated you, that he wanted you gone. He’d have lied so thoroughly you would’ve swallowed it all and left on your own. That, or worse, or more. It would’ve been a kindness._

_Wouldn’t you have done the same?_

_Wouldn’t you?_

Now, Andrew sees the anguish come through, bright and fiery and familiar. It is not for him, but he knows it all the same. Andrew does not move, does not avert his gaze; he can do this much, steeling himself for the inevitable.

“I don’t pretend to know what’s going on between you two because I don’t, and this is— hah. This is terrible, huh? All of these games we play.

“Things won’t be the same afterwards, no matter… Well, I’m just making sure you know.”

Maybe the silence is too much. Andrew watches him go, out the heavy wooden door and into the hall, never looking back as he does.

~

“I miss being out there already,” Steven murmurs, leaning into Andrew’s shoulder as they look out the balcony at the beach and the moon half-hidden behind the clouds. He had come into the room because he is not allowed to be alone with Ryan until after the ceremony, and though Andrew would like to convince himself that is all there is to it he could plainly see how tense Steven is.

For a moment Andrew makes no move; then, hesitantly, he leans in as well. _What’s wrong?_ He questions, but Steven’s gaze is unfocused and far away. The wistfulness is back, tugging at his lips, and something else— is it guilt? Andrew daren’t think more of it.

“Andrew.”

Steven turns to him, hand pressing against his on the balcony edge, and suddenly Andrew realizes just how close they are standing. The wind has died down outside, leaving only the still night and chattering music of early cicadas. And all around them, as it has always been in Andrew’s human dreams, lingers the faint, spiced scent of gardenia wine.

“I haven’t been truthful to you.

“All the times we’ve been out there, just walking. I used to go to the beach alone all the time. Not even with Ryan when he’s visiting. It helps me think things through. And then the shipwreck happened. You know about that, don’t you? Someone saved me from drowning.

“And I thought… well, I thought I might see that person again, down there. He told me to wait for him. That he’ll come again. It’s silly, I know, but… I kept hoping. I want to meet him so badly. To hear his voice again— and I don’t even know what he _looks_ like. If he is even…

“And then you came.”

 _And then you came._ Andrew wants to cry out, reach over to scream the words into Steven’s chest. _It’s me, Steven!_ But the tightening grip on his hand stops him. Steven looks down at his hands and Andrew’s as he whispers, trembling, “I thought you were going to die when I found you. I saw myself there in the sand, and I remembered that night… you are so alike, or so I thought, before I knew you as you. You as Andrew, the person.

“I’ve been so very unfair trying to impose all those memories on you.” Steven looks into Andrew’s eyes with his own now blazing, as if searching for something; as if lost, as if terrified, as if that night on the barge and the high seas again. Andrew could see the goosebumps on Steven’s arm, the pink of his lips, every silvery strand that’s come loose from his carefully combed hair. He thinks Steven might cry, or worse, and the fact twists at his insides. “Because— because you’re _Andrew_ , and not— you’re not— ”

Then he drops Andrew’s hands, looking away in what Andrew dimly registers as shame. “I’m sorry, I think this is, I shouldn’t have, ah— I should go.”

He will remember none of this in the morning. Andrew knows as much, has seen Steven around wine enough to be certain, and knows in his heart of hearts as he takes Steven to the door, the pain in his feet nothing compared to what resides in his chest, what terrible, desolate fate awaits him.

And yet, as Steven looks back at him to smile tremulously one last time before heading off for the night, Andrew cannot help but smile back.

 

II.

 

_“Ryan,” Steven asks, “Is it possible— is it possible to become a merman?”_

_“What?”_

_“I was wondering— you’d said before, those stories about them coming ashore as humans. What if they were humans to begin with, and just went into the sea because— because they longed for the sea?”_

_“Now_ you’re _the one thinking like a crazy person,” Ryan says, and they both laugh. The spring rain outside falls steadily, over the palace rooftops and new banana leaves and flowers lining the garden walkways. Then, curious and a little hesitant, he follows up with, “Do you… really want to know?”_

_“Just wondering,” Steven says, flushing a little as he looks away. “Like you always say, anything’s possible, theoretically… no matter how stupid it sounds. Don’t tell me you...”_

_“I’m definitely human,” Ryan replies quickly, and Steven rolls his eyes. “I mean, I wouldn’t say I know. It could be possible. I’ve never heard of a story like that yet, but…”_

_“But…?”_

_“All I’m saying is, if you believe, you’re already halfway there.”_

~

The fading words pop out at him in the dim candlelight:

_…to complete the ritual, carve out the heart. It must be still moving when you taste…_

Steven rubs his eyes, once, twice, with trembling fingers. Far off, he could hear the night gong go off, the fourth time already since he’s slipped into the back room of the library and locked himself inside.

_...the entirety. After which you submerge yourself in the sea, and wait…_

_…irreversible, though rumors persist of…_

“No,” he whispers, the taste of bile rising up in his throat. The word seems to reverberate throughout the emptiness of the room, settling into dust and bone. Quickly he scans the page once more as the air around him starts to feel colder and colder, but there is little else of help there. Were he to throw away all human sensibilities, it seems practical enough, logical enough, that this would be the way to do it. Even to someone who has never had reason to hold a blade, and has never killed before.

 _To become that which lives in the sea, you must consume what makes it so._ One life in exchange for another. The reality between those words swirls at the bottom of his stomach: _in doing so, you would have already given up your humanity._

Merpeople are real; Steven has seen them, alive and well. It would stand to logic then that however far-fetched these stories about them etched on paper would be, there would be a semblance of truth there.

There would be a chance of this working. Wouldn’t there?

 _So,_ murmurs the voice of his dreams, swirling lovely and low and sweet in his ear, _who will you kill?_

The brush handle slips through his fingers, slick with sweat, and clatters to the ground. Steven bends down to snatch it up and waits, but nobody comes running. Nothing comes crashing down around him, burning to pieces; the world goes on as it always has, the cicadas in their trees and the flowers in their buds and he, here. For a moment as he stares at the carpeting below, he wonders if he might throw up then and there.

It is not long before Steven realizes there is wetness on his cheeks. _Strange_ , he thinks as he straightens up, carefully folds the book back into its leather bindings, tucks it away into the dark recesses of the library where he will remember to come for it later, to burn. The coldness seems to have taken over his body, rooted itself into the back of his mind as he sits there with his whole body trembling.

_Once you make up your mind..._

He doesn’t know where the two he saw talking to Andrew are now, or if they are still here, or if they will ever appear again. He doesn’t know where to find them, or if he could, if it would be easier to capture and interrogate them, rather than go through with the music that had planted itself into his heart ever since that night.

The age-old folly all of these stories have in common: _a man fell in love with a mermaid, and gave her his heart so she could become one, too._

Steven gets up from the chair and slips out of the library wordlessly, candle extinguished and left behind. By the moonlight he could make out all the paths he has walked countless times, every hallway leading to the next, every step he takes leading back to the same place.

He stands beneath Andrew’s balcony and waits, but it is dark still, and there would be no music. Not yet, and not—

“Andrew,” Steven whispers, noting with growing despair the strain coming into his voice. _What if he is all wrong about this? What of that, then?_ The night has no answer, and he fears that it would. “Who are you?”

In his head the song rumbles again, this time no longer uncertain.

~

Steven dreams that night, of birdsong and green eyes, of someone’s hands cupping his cheek, running gentle fingers through his long hair. He dreams of the rain upon his face, or perhaps they were tears. Vaguely, he recalls thinking if angels could weep, surely they would at what he has always known he would do.

He had been wrong about that story, in the end. The maiden had not wanted to leave at all. She had wanted to become human so badly, to be infused with flower and earth and sky and sea, to know what it is like to be terrified and awed by those around her. To love like humans would, with all their flaws and anger and sadness, despite from where she had come.

And Steven dreams of Andrew and his wistful gaze, of the strange yearning ache in his own chest, of knowing now that he would never, ever let go. Of holding the silver dagger close to his heart, and plunging down, down, down...

~

On the dawn of the last day, before the attendants are due to arrive, he wakes to a series of rapid knocks on his bedroom door, the kind he hasn’t heard in years.

“Steven,” Ryan says, so quietly and so urgently it drives all of Steven’s thoughts back to the present, “I need to tell you something.”

 

III.

 

The royal barge is larger than any ship Andrew has seen before, even the one during that storm that had almost claimed Steven’s life during what already seems like an eternity ago. His feet wobble as he steadies himself against the painted railings—the sea is not rough today, but it feels so different from what he has always been used to. There are too many other things that take his attention away, the multitude of people milling around him and the seagulls above, the little boats passing alongside dwarfed by their shadow.

He touches a nearby garland, one of thousands wreathed on rails and above doors and over the canopy where the ceremony is to be held. All along the wake of their ship petals bob with the currents, red and yellow and pink and pale lavender. Andrew could barely smell the salt in the air anymore, the warmth of the sun washing over him in a way that momentarily takes his mind off the impending ceremony.

If not for the gentle rocking underfoot he could almost believe they were on land, elsewhere.

Andrew is here merely as a guest, not a performer, not a servant, not family member or spirit long gone. It is almost as if he is invisible. He prefers it this way, standing off to the side while the courtiers mingle and settle down to their assigned seats. He is nobody after all, in the grand scheme of things.

When the drumming starts, he looks up to the raised dais where the presiding families sit, all smiles as the sound of marching draws near from the deck below. Steven had told him about the procession before, but it is all jumbled inside his head. The ceremonies one after another, presenting treasures, the dances, the feasting, the everything in color that Andrew has never before seen or will see again. If this is what heaven is, so different from the stories his people sing of…

_If only it were another—_

The sunlight coming in his direction blinds Andrew, but only for a moment. Steven emerges from the carved ivory doorway in pale pink silk, long hair tucked away in his crown of soft gold, his head held high. Stoicness doesn’t suit him, but Andrew sees nothing in his face all the same; a careful, neutral expression that must’ve taken weeks to perfect. He does not look at his attendants or the guests or the flowers, but stares straight ahead. It is a Steven that Andrew has never known before, or only in fragments, and he does not know if he is more in awe or afraid.

 _Don’t you see now?_ whispers his traitorous heart. _You should never have come._

Andrew watches Steven kneel down as the priest fits the ceremonial robe threaded with the golden moon around his shoulders, and then around Ryan’s. He listens without understanding what the priest says next as the music dies away and the audience is silent, an intonation from some language lost to time. He smells the aged wine being poured into the porcelain cups from where he stands, strong and heady even above the perfume of the flowers.

They raise their wine cups thrice; to the king and queen, to the sky and sea, to each other.

“To those who came before us, to those who will stay long after we are gone— ”

The seagulls shriek near Andrew’s ear, as if reminding him _now, now, now._ He does not get to hear the last vow.

~

The ceremonies bleed into one another, as does the music, the feasts, the people. Andrew remembers little of the day by the end of it, walking from one end of the ship to another in a daze. Were he able to talk he would still have had little to say and even less time to do so; he does not see any of them again until now, when the tune starts to pick up the pace.

Steven is laughing now, if not from the wine the from the atmosphere. In the center of the room the courtiers draw apart as the newlyweds whirl around to the drums and flute; Ryan takes him by the waist, dipping him down so low his hair sweeps the ground, and both of them are flushed red by the time they are upright again. Soon they are swallowed by other pairs, feet thundering raucously against the floorboards.

Andrew stands alone near the door, finding himself tapping his fingers to the wood along to the music out of habit, sipping on sweet wine that burns the back of his throat. Someone bumps into him, and he looks up to see Shane with a glass.

“You know,” Shane says, his speech slurred a little; Andrew frowns, in that he’s never seen him like this before. And it’s almost as if Shane isn’t speaking to him, but to himself. “They won’t be considered— really, you know, married until the morning after. You know why, Andrew?”

Andrew inclines his head in a way that hopefully says _I don’t want to,_ but it goes unnoticed. The smile on Shane’s face is not unkind, though it stirs something unpleasant inside him all the same.

“You’ll see.”

And then he is gone, somehow disappeared into the crowd despite his height. Most of these people will be gone by the time the night winds down, taking their smaller boats back to shore. In the morning, there would be one last ceremony in this country before the entourage heads back to the mainland.

He won’t be around to see it.

Then Andrew hears a meow; he looks down, and finds the black-and-white cat nudging against his legs as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. He will miss this, everything, beyond what he’s bargained for— a realization that has his hands tremble a little as he reaches down to run his fingers through soft fur. Though he’s told himself over and over and over; this is already more than he deserves.

The music changes again, and Andrew realizes everyone around him has switched partners. The cat slinks away through the door, and he leans back to watch, setting his glass aside. He can’t see Ryan anymore, but Steven is there, cleaving through the crowds towards him like a knife through water, now that everyone’s attention is elsewhere.

Andrew knows what is about to happen, but he looks away all the same. _I don’t know how to dance._

Steven smiles, the red flush still on his cheeks as he takes the remnants of Andrew’s glass and downs it. But now Andrew sees those warm brown eyes are squarely focused on him, never wavering. “I know. I’ll teach you, Andrew, just for tonight.”

He should refuse. His feet hurt, and people might see, even if they don’t understand. But somehow, somewhere along the way, Andrew thinks maybe, maybe, it doesn’t matter anymore. He nods and takes Steven’s hand, letting himself be whirled away into the night.

It’s sort of a lie. Andrew has always been good at learning, taking things in and making them his own. In a past life he had learned quickly how to find the best fishing grounds from the warmth of the sun, how to expertly weave strands of seaweed around their underwater dwellings, how to read signals from the echo of secret caverns. In this life he has learned to walk, learned to read, and now, learned where to place his hands on Steven’s body as the music slows and simmers.

Steven’s hands are on his waist, then his shoulder, then his neck as Andrew reaches up and brushes away a stray strand of hair on his forehead. Beneath them the floorboards creak agreeably as they switch positions, swaying, skin against skin. Thinking quietly that this moment might last forever.

Then, Steven looks down at their feet as if for the first time.

“Am I making you uncomfortable?” He asks quietly, and Andrew shakes his head _no, never,_ even as his toes protest in vain. Andrew tilts his head back, taking in him fully: the firelight glancing off his hair, his skin no longer pale and cold, the air sweet with flower and wine. That night from months ago comes rushing back, the euphoric high of being inebriated on a dream. Steven’s smiling at him in a way that he thinks he might break into a million pieces were he to hold the gaze any longer.

It’s now or never.

Andrew presses his lips to the crook of Steven’s neck, lingering for only the shortest of moments:

_Run._

“Andrew…?”

In the midst of it all the music changes again, and then Andrew steps away, letting the crowd swallow him whole.

Beneath layered silk the dagger still burns hot, hot, hot.

~

He walks past the now-quiet deck lined with lanterns burning soft red and gold, illuminating the wooden walls with splashes of color. In the dark of the night, after everyone has gone, he could still faintly smell the flowers, bright ylang-ylang and sweet wisteria and perfumed rose.

It would be easy. It would be quick.

Andrew had seen Ryan leave the room earlier, having waved off the guards for privacy. All of these games they play, as human or as merman, as prince or as maiden, they matter little now. His job is easier now, in shadow and in this skin.

He stands in front of the door for only a while before a firm push lets him in.

Inside, the room is dark. A single candle has burned down to its end, illuminating only slightly the contours of Steven’s face. Andrew watches his chest rise and fall beneath the blanket, the serenity in his face framed by the thin moonlight streaming in through the window. Almost as if he were an angel chosen to return home.

Drawing near, he digs into the sash where the dagger is, and notes that his hands are not shaking anymore.

_You cannot return the way you came._

~

_Did she also have this choice to make? To go back to heaven? Did she have to cut away all that made her who she was, and everything she had ever wished for, so she could be reborn?_

Andrew remembers now, listening to Steven recite the story’s ending for the first time, his eyes glistening and clear and full of longing: _As she dons the celestial robe once more, the human world and its trials are left behind to be forgotten forever_.

_Was it worth it, in the end?_

~

Andrew stands on the deck, watching the moon hang low. Soon the sun will rise, and soon all living things will awaken once more.

He tosses the dagger into the ocean, watching the gentle ripples swallow it whole. Perchance one day someone will find it again in the shifting sand, or perhaps it will go to where all magic goes to die. He thinks about the shallow sunlit seabeds, the dark green of the kelp forests, and in some faraway memory the voices of his friends calling him home. The ship is quiet, so quiet.

Andrew takes out his flute, and begins to play.

 

IV.

 

“Do you hear that?” Ryan whispers. “What’s he doing?”

“Talking.”

“Steven, that’s not— ”

“He'll stop soon enough.” Steven sits up in the bed, feeling Ryan’s stare boring holes into the back of his head in a way that momentarily takes his mind off the frenzied beating of his heart.

Andrew had been careful. The blade had not broken skin, though Steven could still feel a lingering tingle where it had briefly lain across his throat. He runs a hand across the spot, and there’s something electrifying in the way his fingers seem to recall the feeling. Something magical and terrifying in remembering his own mortality.

“You were right,” Steven says, the words needles on his tongue.

The thing is, he doesn’t feel afraid anymore. No matter how many books he’s read, no matter how many stories he’s been told, none of it measures up to the real thing, the too-loud palpitations of his heart.

“Steven, I—” Ryan isn’t looking at him now, his eyes on the bed and his clenched fists. It cuts almost even worse than what Steven had expected; of course he would blame himself for something entirely out of his hands. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have asked you...”

“No.” Steven squeezes his arm once, as much in reassurance as to keep his mind from wavering. “I’m the one who should be sorry.

“ _I_ chose this— selfishly, but I did. It’s not your fault.”

_The blood would only be on my hands._

Ryan is quiet for a few moments that seem to tick by for an eternity. “Well, it’s human to be selfish.”

The light squeeze on his shoulder says _good luck_ , but it's not luck Steven needs now. He doesn’t look as Ryan leaves the room, no matter how in his heart he knows this is the last they will see of each other.

When he can no longer hear footsteps Steven stands up, walking to the other side of the room where the lacquered wedding chests sit. He kneels down and opens the lid from one, then another, then another, pulling out the contents one by one, each chest spilling forth jewels and silk and beautiful, useless things. The smell of ancient wood and perfume fills the space around him, what he as a child had looked forward to, as if crying out,

_Don’t go._

He wills the tears away. And then, at the bottom of a chest he finds what he has been looking for.

In one clean motion the ceremonial dagger slices through silk bindings, his long hair, the summer air, humming as it does so. Steven watches the silver strands glisten in the moonlight around his feet, trying to not wonder who will be the first to discover them. Would they think he had been a victim of foul play, had fallen overboard, had drowned on a night swim?

Will they ever come to the final, terrible conclusion of his madness, after all others have been exhausted?

~

_“It’s about Andrew, he’s—”_

_“I know.”_

~

The flute-song has long since stopped, and Ryan would be long gone now, on one of the little ships that had been waiting all night by the bay. If anything, Steven thinks, at least one of them would be coming out of this with something to hope for.

He walks past the silent dancefloor, feet treading light upon yesterday’s flowers strewn about the dark wood. Past the galley where the cooks snore gently by the stoves, and the stairwell leading down to the hold of the ship where the waves ring hollow. Past the expansive rooms where the families slumber on, stumbling over fallen garlands, extinguished lanterns.

He follows the music already fading away, and the moon sinking into the horizon beyond the stern of the ship.

Andrew’s door is closed, when Steven finds it.

Steven looks out over the deck, at the water dark and calm. He looks down for the briefest of moments, searching for any sign of a scratch, nails digging into the wood, barnacles broken and cut away. There is a story there from long ago, perhaps better left to be forgotten.

He wonders if this would be a more merciful end than sinking into the sea while saltwater burns his lungs.

_Did she have to beg to become human? Did she have to subsume the life of another, living a stolen identity that was never hers to begin with?_

_Did she live with that guilt for the rest of her life, and is that why she wanted, in the end, to return?_

Andrew would not cry out, could not cry out, because he won’t be given time to. Steven pushes the door open and finds the room sparse and clean and the bed occupied.

Already there is a hint of dawn light seeping in through the windows, just barely striking the golden-brown of his hair and lashes, the pale knuckles of his hands. For a moment Steven panics: would he be pretending, like Steven had pretended back in his own room? Would he be waiting for a chance to spring upon Steven, as if this were a trap?

Why did Andrew not kill him when he had the chance to?

Andrew had wanted to become human, hadn’t he? Had found a way to shed his tail, had pretended to wash ashore, had walked alongside Steven for all of these months, had done all of those things that made Steven laugh, made Steven pine, made Steven unsure of his heart, all the better so he could take it and be truly reborn. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

_Had he fallen for his own ruse in pursuit of that goal?_

_It is a foolish notion_ , Steven thinks or perhaps says aloud, through the wetness beginning to brim in the corners of his eyes. He cannot think of wavering on suppositions now that he has come this far. Andrew does not stir from his sleep, even with the edge of a newly minted blade resting heavy upon his throat. The waves outside seem to grow louder, louder, pulling to Steven like they have been for nights upon nights. Telling him in that familiar voice _come, come home._

 _Come home._ He raises the knife as the first ray of dawn happens upon it, setting the room ablaze with jeweled light.

_It is a foolish notion because you’ve known, all this time, that you are the one who has been lying to yourself._

The knife clatters to the floor as he falls, hands scraping the floorboards as his chest burns with realization. _Of course_ , he cries out soundlessly, choking on the air. Who is he to take a life of another, and who exists again only in song and sea of a passing dream, and who has been in front of him all this time, waiting, indulging, faithful—

All this time Steven had wanted to be swallowed by the currents, only because they had borne him to Andrew.

Slowly, he picks up the knife, the weight unfamiliar as if someone had severed what invisible strings had wound upon his limbs. He hovers it upon the desk next to Andrew’s bed, adorned only with dried petals from long ago, before setting it down. What is he to do now? Andrew must have heard the sounds, and there is no chance that once he does he won’t know what Steven had been about to do were he to awaken now. Steven’s head feels light, only in part from the hair he no longer misses and the crown he can no longer wear.

“Andrew,” he calls out once, and this time the tears come boiling hot.

Andrew does not shift beneath his covers, does not move an inch, his face expressionless and deathly pale. Almost as if even without his heart’s intervention this would be Steven’s punishment all the same. Would he still have a place by Andrew’s side after this terrible endeavor, a far cry from that night of high winds and billowing waves—

In the ensuing silence he calls from memory the moonlight glinting off silvery scales: _come around, call back my heart._

“It’s you,” Steven whispers, the waves inside his chest surging, singing, instinctual and desperate and no longer afraid of the consequences, “Wasn’t it, Andrew?

“That night, it was you who saved me.”

His trembling fingers reach for refuge, realizing warmth in spite of everything. Then, he hears the waves answer, louder and closer than they ever did in his dreams:

“Steven.”

Andrew is looking at him now, lips parted. And in the brilliant dawn light, beyond his tears, Steven finds himself gazing once again upon the color of the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  你所在之處，即是天堂   
> 
> 
>   
>  [some ending notes for those interested](https://altadanza.tumblr.com/private/184226168325/tumblr_ppzvnb00Ih1y4qsez)   
> 


End file.
